Important cultural property

A wakizashi dated 1586 by Horikawa Kunihiro, the smith later called the founder of Japan's new sword era. An early work, now an Important Cultural Property in Osaka.

The Colored-Picture Decorated Paper, Ink-Written Kanfugen-kyo (Fragment / Fan-Shaped Sutra) is a single surviving leaf of the celebrated Senmen Hokekyo Sasshi, originally a ten-volume fan-shaped sutra booklet from late Heian Japan. Layered with mica, gold and silver leaf, yamato-e painting, and elegant ink calligraphy, it is now an Important Cultural Property held by the Fujita Museum in Osaka.

Held in Osaka Prefecture, this Important Cultural Property is a black-ink drawing on paper that depicts both the layout of a Buddhist goma fire-ritual altar and the thirty-seven principal deities of the Diamond Realm Mandala rendered as their symbolic samaya emblems. Transmitted within the lineage of the great pilgrim-monk Chishō Daishi Enchin (814–891), it offers a rare window into the visual language of Japanese Esoteric Buddhism.

Seventy-six fusuma panels by Kano school artists from the early 17th century adorn four rooms of Daian-ji Temple's Main Hall in Sakai City, Osaka. Designated as an Important Cultural Property, these gold-ground polychrome and ink paintings are the sole surviving barrier paintings from Sakai — once one of Japan's wealthiest trading cities. The collection includes the legendary 'Pine with Added Branch' featured in prewar Japanese textbooks.

In an Osaka museum, this pair of Momoyama folding screens paints Europeans arriving by ship and Christian worship on gold leaf. It opens only in May and November.

Discover the Usa-gū Shinryō Ōkagami, an Important Cultural Property and the sole surviving Kamakura-period manuscript documenting the sacred estates of Usa Jingū, the head shrine of over 44,000 Hachiman shrines across Japan.

An Important Cultural Property held by a private owner in Oita Prefecture, this hanging-scroll fragment is one section of the celebrated Satake-bon Sanjurokkasen-e — a 13th-century Kamakura-period scroll widely regarded as the finest surviving example of poet-portrait painting in Japan. Traditionally attributed in painting to Fujiwara no Nobuzane and in calligraphy to Gokyogoku Yoshitsune, the fragment depicts the Heian poet Fujiwara no Kanesuke (Tsutsumi Chunagon), great-grandfather of Genji author Murasaki Shikibu. It is one of 37 sections created when the original handscroll was famously divided in 1919, an event known as the Emaki Setsudan. This article guides visitors through the work's artistic significance, its remarkable scattering, and the cultural attractions of Oita that surround it.

The Miura Baien Manuscripts, designated as an Important Cultural Property of Japan, comprise 30 categories of autograph manuscripts (212 volumes) and four personal artifacts belonging to the Edo-period philosopher Miura Baien (1723–1789). Preserved in Kunisaki City, Oita Prefecture, these documents record his original philosophical system known as Jōrigaku (Study of Natural Order), which anticipated Western dialectical philosophy. The collection is displayed at the Miura Baien Museum alongside his former residence, a National Historic Site.

Discover the Essel Telegraaf, the only surviving domestically-made telegraph from Japan's Edo period. Housed at Isahaya Museum of Art & History in Nagasaki Prefecture, this Important Cultural Property reveals how late-Edo innovators adapted Dutch technology.

Discover the Tachi inscribed Naminohira Ieyasu, a Kamakura-period Important Cultural Property crafted by Japan's longest-lived sword school, the Satsuma Naminohira lineage. This rare 67.5 cm blade, designated in 1955, preserves the Yamato tradition through its tight ko-itame hada and disciplined thin suguha temper line.

Preserved in Tsushima City, Nagasaki, the Chōsen-koku Kokushin are three Joseon-dynasty appointment documents issued in 1477, 1482, and 1503 to Japanese mariners connected with the Sōda clan of medieval Tsushima. Designated an Important Cultural Property in 1974, they are the oldest substantial set of Joseon appointment letters surviving in Japan and a first-class source for understanding the diplomacy that transformed pirates into licensed traders.

Held privately in Nagano, this unsigned 70-centimeter katana is attributed to the Nanbokucho Hasebe school, the Kyoto line behind the famed Heshikiri Hasebe.

Held by the Sunritz Hattori Museum of Arts in Suwa City, Nagano Prefecture, this Important Cultural Property is a single-figure fragment of the celebrated thirteenth-century Satake-bon Sanjūrokkasen-e — the foremost surviving cycle of Thirty-six Immortal Poets paintings of the Kamakura period. The fragment depicts Nakatsukasa, a tenth-century Heian poetess and daughter of Prince Atsuyoshi and the poetess Ise. Traditionally attributed to the master portraitist Fujiwara Nobuzane, with calligraphy attributed to Gokyōgoku Yoshitsune, the work survived the famous 1919 dispersal known as the Cutting of the Picture Scroll and now rests on the quiet shore of Lake Suwa.

A Momoyama short sword sheathed in patterned gold, over an earlier Nobukuni blade. Its lion fittings are attributed to the Goto family, with Hosokawa provenance.

Three small silver cups at Tokyo's Eisei Bunko, said to be from China's Jincun tombs near Luoyang. Note the surviving gilding, loose rings, and inscribed bases.

Taken in 1854 by Eliphalet Brown Jr. during Commodore Perry's expedition, this daguerreotype portrait of Tanaka Mitsuyoshi — a samurai official who negotiated with the American squadron — is one of the oldest surviving photographs of a Japanese person taken on Japanese soil. Designated a national Important Cultural Property in 2006, this quarter-plate daguerreotype is entrusted to the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum in Yebisu Garden Place, Meguro, Tokyo.

A collection of autograph manuscript drafts by the Edo-period Buddhist monk and scholar Keichū (1640–1701), designated as an Important Cultural Property of Japan. The collection includes working drafts of groundbreaking works such as the Man'yō Daishōki and Waji Shōran-shō that laid the foundations of Japanese classical studies and linguistics.

This rare 27-centimetre ken, straight and double-edged, is signed by Mitsutada, the Kamakura-era founder of Bizen's Osafune school, a smith famed for curved tachi.

Held at the Tokyo National Museum, this Important Cultural Property is a rare dated hanging scroll painted in 1792 by literati master Uragami Gyokudō at age forty-eight, just two years before he abandoned his samurai life. Discover its bright indigo-and-ochre palette and the seeds of his later masterworks.

A Kamakura silk painting of Aizen Myōō, the red king of passion, an Important Cultural Property of 1953. His iconography and where to see kindred scrolls in Tokyo.